Torment
by Silence-Speaker
Summary: When Tom took over the wizarding world a mere eleven years since his 'death' he expected that to be the end of his troubles. Harry Potter , however, has a different idea of peace. Destroying each other's solace is the name of the game with no winner.


Torment: Severe physical or mental suffering.

Disclaimer.

Warning: Um...right... Disturbing themes...Torture (not graphic), death...probably slight Stockholm syndrome...some weird afterlife stuff...

* * *

There was a ghost at Riddle manor.

A ghost no one could actually say they had met but one that everyone had heard stories about.

The Death Eaters under Lord Voldemort's rule all whispered about the strange apparition that had always been there, so it was rumoured.

Or at least been there since Lord Voldemort's rule, after he had come back from the dead after eleven years of nothing.

Once or twice a Death Eater or two had actually spotted their Lord walking round with the strange ghost like creature.

It couldn't quite be called a ghost because there was colour there, leaching through the opaque mistiness.

It was whispered that the ghost-thing was young. A mere boy.

So why was the Dark Lord so attached to the odd _creature_?

A few people whispered that it was the Dark Lord's own son and that when he had been killed the Dark Lord had recalled a small part of his soul. That was what gave the odd apparition his slight colour, the blackest of black hair and the greenest of eyes.

No one knew the truth and no one had actually _spoken_ to the odd ghost thing but everyone knew someone who had seen him.

xxx

Harry couldn't remember much of what _before_ was like. Before he was a friend of Tom's...no a prisoner, Harry reminded himself for the hundredth time.

And he had to remember to call him Voldemort, not Tom. He got ever so cross when Harry called him Tom.

But Harry liked the name 'Tom'. It rolled off the tongue easily and wasn't too long. It also made Harry think of someone he used to know...the name was similar (well nearly)...Ron yes that was his name, red hair and freckles. Lots of brothers.

(He also sometimes liked irritating Tom.)

Harry didn't like remembering things. They felt fragmented and were teasing snippets of a life he could only partly recall.

They felt like a story book, a book that Harry was jealous of and wanted to dive into.

There was laughter once, dazzling smiles, warm eyes and _belonging_.

Harry moved closer to the eerily crackling fire place. It was fruitless, the fire didn't warm him. Nothing did. He was always cold.

Harry sat on top of the embers, it was an odd sensation, he could feel the fire flicker but the warmth didn't touch him, no burning pain, no scorched flesh. But then there wasn't any flesh to scorch was there?

Harry eyed his near translucent arms. Once they had been flesh, once they had been soft to the touch and easily marked.

"...Harry..."

Harry came out of his thoughts as though struggling through a deep mire to reach the surface of reality. He looked around the room. The fire was long dead and Harry was sitting on the cold charred bits of wood and ash.

"Harry?" The voice called again and Harry blinked to see the man who had pulled him back to reality once again.

Harry sighed uncrossing his small limbs and stretching out unnecessarily. Harry liked to keep moving like alive human people did. It made him feel...happier was the word but still not quite right.

"Tom." Harry breathed blinking as he tried not to fall back into his hazy daydreams of sunshine and even warmer laughter that spilled over green grass.

Too late Harry recalled his companions distaste for the name and a frown crossed his face. The tall man, with such piercing grey eyes and pale skin, tilted his head but for once didn't chastise Harry for the use of his name.

Harry blinked as the brief flash of a black diary filled with neat script and a single name, Tom M. Riddle. Memories flooded his mind only to pour away like water out of a sieve.

Harry stood smoothly. The top of his head reached about midway through the torso of Tom. He had always been short for his age and having his height halted at twelve meant he remained short.

He was only a little annoyed. Really.

"How was your day?" Harry asked curiously, following Tom out of the room and into the well lit corridor. Harry blinked at the change in lighting; the room he had been in was dark, completely dark since the fire had gone out.

"Why must the people employed in such high positions of power be so incompetent at their own jobs?" Tom bit out glaring at the floor. Harry eyed the tense set of Tom's shoulders and the slightly pinched irritated expression that pulled at his mouth.

"Well if they weren't then they wouldn't need you at the helm." Harry stated carefully. Tom didn't like excessive flattery, well not from Harry anyway.

He skipped over to the window in the hall, leaving Tom's side and staring out at the cloudy grey sky, little snatches of sunshine peeking through.

"Harry." Tom called as Harry stared out the window a little too long. Tom wasn't a patient man.

"Hmmm?" Harry responded, reluctantly dragging his eyes away from the clear glass and the few mottled trees he spied on the ragged grass.

Tom gestured down the hall and Harry grudgingly traipsed after Tom into the little parlour room that only Harry and Tom used when they wanted to talk.

There were different rooms for reading, studies, private rooms...but this was the room they shared.

Harry drifted over to his usual seat, a large slightly ragged looking armchair that had more than one rip in the seam and looked like you would sink right into it never to be found again. It was a mismatch with the rest of the dark austere furniture and harsh lines all neat and regulated.

Harry adored it.

He felt the softest brush of a hand running through his hair, barely felt, barely there. Harry didn't say anything about the gentle hair tousle. Tom wouldn't do it again if he mentioned how much he liked it, the casual brush of affectionate contact with a human being.

With _Tom_.

Harry had never liked to be alone. Even _before_, that much Harry knew.

"...Harry!"

Harry blinked and jerked out of his thoughts. Tom was sitting opposite him with an irritated expression in his grey eyes that flittered into something else, something approaching concern before that too disappeared.

Harry realised with an internal start that Tom had been calling his name while he was lost in his thoughts and he hadn't realised.

"Sorry." Harry murmured contritely. He didn't mean to be rude. The ire in Tom's eyes cooled and melted away like wisps of smoke in an icy swift breeze.

"Your memory lapses are increasing. How many hours did you lose today?" Tom asked collectedly without any emotion colouring his voice.

Harry hadn't realised how much he liked the colours in people's voices before, the pictures in sound. Brief splashes of colour that lit up the dull grey horizon for a few precious moments before fading away.

Screams of pain, shrieks of grief were an angry eye ball searing red-orange, far too bright to look at and reminiscent of an out of control fire burning at the very vestiges of reality.

Laughter was blue. The colour of the sky on a clear sunny day, fathomless yet so shallow.

Contentment, words laced with happiness were indigo. Deep and all encompassing, you could lose yourself in indigo.

Tom's words were grey, usually tinged with red or sickly green.

Any emotion at all was glaringly obvious when Tom spoke as even a little colour on a grey blank wall was incredibly noticeable.

"What time is it?" Harry asked after a lengthy pause. Tom, for once, seemed to wait patiently for Harry to work it out.

Tom's mouth pinched.

"Seven forty-nine." Tom answered in clipped tones.

Did Harry spot a hint of yellow? Concern? Worry?

"Morning or evening?" Harry asked with a frown. How long had he spent sitting on top of the cooling embers?

"Evening. We spoke two nights ago."

Harry's frown deepened.

"More than a day less than two." Harry finally answered when it seemed that Tom had gotten just impatient enough for his index finger to begin twitching.

Harry didn't like it when Tom's index finger twitched. It reminded him of pain.

Agony, endless screams pouring from his own lips, tearing at his raw throat. A curse that began with C and a flash of red light and then never ended. Or did it end too quickly and begin again too soon for Harry to remember the difference?

His own voice didn't have any colours, well not that Harry could tell and Tom just looked at Harry oddly when he had asked. Harry didn't mention the coloured sounds after that.

"You can't narrow it down?"

Dark blue, hint of yellow and a splash of red. Control, concern and, predictably, anger.

"More than five hours after we talked, I believe...I'm not sure how long after that. The fire was out." Harry answered. If the fire was out then it meant Harry had spent more than twenty-four hours seated on the coals.

The House-elves lit every fire for an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, in their morning rounds. They hadn't relit it because they weren't allowed in the same room as Harry or Tom, or anyone else in the manor, unless they had been called.

Harry thought it a shame. He liked talking to them. Their voices were cheerful, the best of brightest colours without being too bright as to burn at the eyes.

The fire had only just been lit before Harry entered the room.

Tom's lips thinned.

"That long?"

Sickly green. Deceit.

Deceptively calm.

Harry shrugged, forgetting for the moment that Tom did not like him doing such an 'uncouth gesture'.

"Look at me." Tom ordered and Harry obediently, instinctively, turned his head to look Tom in the eyes.

He was prepared for the sharp sting of pain as Tom entered his mind matching Harry's memories of the day with time.

"I see." Tom muttered as he gently slipped out of Harry's mind. It still stung a little but Harry was glad Tom had been considerate enough to soften his exit. He hadn't always been so...nice.

Tom had told Harry about this odd thing called Legilimency a long time ago...Harry forgot how many years, maybe even decades.

Black. Tom's voice was black. You would think a mixture of emotions would turn an ugly shade of brown, like paints, but instead they formed a dense black rolling turmoil.

A whirlpool that sucked you in too.

"...Harry!...Harry!"

Harry startled almost completely out of his chair when he realised Tom was calling his name. His stomach sank slightly when he observed the fire had gone down noticeably since they had entered the room.

"Sorry." Harry said softly. Tom shook his head and there was a faint trace of wild panic in his eyes, a sort of desperate intensity that frightened Harry. He knew the consequences of that obsessive look. He remembered _that_.

"Why didn't you tell me it had gotten so bad?"

Frosty grey. Tinge of deep cerulean blue. Despair.

"I didn't notice." Harry answered truthfully. How was he supposed to realise time slipping away from him? How was he supposed to recognise when he spaced out? There was no one else but Tom to tell him when he did slip away.

"This time, this time I'll make something to stop it. There is a potion I have been reading about that if I tweak along with a few spells..." Tom trailed off as Harry smiled.

It wasn't a warm, soft smile but a broken, cracked facsimile of a smile that used to haunt that young face.

Brittle, sharp and so many holes.

"I've been dead a long while now Tom. I'm just waiting for the final bits of my soul to rejoin the rest. A soul has to be whole, Tom." Harry stated voicing nothing that he hadn't told Tom time and time before.

Tom had killed him, years ago and he had also resurrected him from the dead, years ago.

Only not all of Harry had come back.

Not his whole soul and not his whole body.

Fractured pieces of the boy he had once been and the man he might have become had he lived past twelve and survived into adulthood. Broken memories that may have been due to the torture he had endured before his death but more likely was because Harry had been torn unwillingly from the lands of the dead and back to the living as neither.

Tom's face closed off like it always did when Harry mentioned souls or their need to remain intact.

Over the years Harry had come to the conclusion that Tom's soul was fractured, split apart.

And Tom knew it. Feared it. Revelled in it.

"I will find something." Tom vowed. Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Every time I deteriorate you say the same thing. And yet here I am, more than a ghost but less than a human." Harry looked pointedly at his arm.

Where once there had been flesh, blood and bone was an almost translucent caricature of an arm painted with the palest of pinks.

Dips and hollows where shadows lay made Harry out to be human, small, not blurry yet indistinct.

He didn't need to eat or drink. He didn't sweat, didn't have muscles to exert. He didn't need sleep but he did sleep sometimes, just because it was an easy way to escape.

"This time is different." Tom bit out.

Harry smiled tolerantly a flicker of amusement lighting momentarily in his eyes.

This time was different. Never before had Harry's mind faded, had he lost time, been lost in memories that cloaked him.

The first time it had been his body that had failed. Tom had resurrected him with his torture ridden _real_ body. His nerves shot by the numerous curses. Harry hadn't been able to pick up a book, his muscles constantly shaking far too much to do a single thing.

That hadn't been the problem though.

Harry's body had slowly but surely begun to decay. The spells that laced him, to anchor a soul not bound for earth to it did not allow for the flesh preserving dark curses. Harry had rotted away and with the disintegration of his body his souls ties to earth were splintered, one by one.

Harry had been gleeful despite the decay of his body. He would soon be free once more, roaming the lands of the dead like he was supposed to.

Not trapped in a dark world devoid of the light Harry so adored in death.

But Tom had bound him differently. Trapped him in a different prison.

Tom had bound his spirit to the ley lines. Magic literally kept him on earth.

He wasn't bound to his body so when it finally turned to dust he was still stuck on the mortal plane.

But Tom had encountered a problem then. Harry's soul may be bound to the earth but it wasn't bound to Riddle Manor and Harry had no body, was invisible, not there to the touch, voiceless. Unable to do anything but drift.

Tom had (eventually) surmounted these problems and Harry was stuck, a mere shadow of himself, a memory, an echo of what he was before.

But now, years later, Tom was being shown once more that the dead were supposed to stay dead.

The mortal realm wasn't for those without breath just as the land of the dead wasn't for those still alive.

Harry was slowly losing himself. Little pieces of him, bits that made up his soul were drifting slowly but surely through the realms to his true home.

More than half his soul had crossed over, it was just waiting for the rest to join up.

Harry was merely letting the time slip by until he returned from the home he was dragged, no, _torn_ away from.

But Tom didn't want him to leave and Harry was hesitant to hope he might return home when Tom had been so tenacious before. Preventing his leaving.

Sometimes Harry forgot himself, forgot he was supposed to hate Tom rather than pity him. Forgot that you don't sympathise with the devil.

Tom had revived Harry to begin with just to inflict more torture upon him, to torment him evermore. Just to have a prisoner he couldn't just kill with a simple spell and a flash of bright green light.

Tom's plan had backfired on him. Harry had kept himself away from Tom when he was angry so Harry had never suffered fully under Tom's rage after his death. By miniscule degrees Tom had slowly come to regard Harry with affection.

Harry was more than just a possession of Tom's. He was one of Tom's _treasures_.

Not something Tom would destroy or discard away but one he would keep close and occasionally polish.

Tom liked talking to Harry.

Harry, although wary of Tom and more than a few times terrified, had never bowed to every single one of Tom's whims, he had never attempted to please Tom, get in his good graces. He had just been himself and that had eventually got under Tom's skin and Tom began to value Harry.

Harry was someone Tom could speak to truthfully, no mincing of words, no subtle threat laced sentences. Harry thought Tom saw him as a companion, a friend of sorts.

His only friend.

Friendship had a different definition when Tom used it and Harry knew this. He rather thought his own definition of friendship had been tainted by Tom.

And now, after decades of coexisting, Harry was finally leaving and he could see the devastation this was reaping on Tom to its full extent.

Tom didn't form attachments, he didn't have friends. So the regard he held Harry in was unique.

And all the more powerful for this.

Harry knew his leaving would shatter Tom in a way Tom had never experienced before. He had made Tom feel when Tom couldn't before.

A little of Harry's soul had bled through to Tom's. Enough that he could _feel_.

Harry didn't feel remorse though. Even through the distant pity he couldn't bring himself to feel remorse.

Tom had killed him doubly so. And Harry did not so easily forget the deaths of all those he held dear.

Sometimes he lapsed and saw Tom as a friend, someone whose company he craved. Other times he didn't but that didn't stop him conversing civilly. He just had to be patient, that was all.

Harry sometimes shut himself away. When memories of a black diary, a huge serpent and red hair running into even redder blood flooded through him.

Bushy brown hair, once warm eyes forever cold and glassy. A red haired boy with clear and achingly young blue eyes. An old white bearded man, whose blue eyes looked so anguished when he was brought in and saw Harry's broken bleeding body, there for Voldemort's fun. A pet to torture.

Harry didn't remember everything and nothing he remembered clearly but what he did recall he linked back to Tom.

It was Tom's fault. Tom who had killed Harry's friends so Harry would return the favour.

Sort of.

Did it count if it was himself?

"What did you do today?" Harry asked Tom who was watching him pensively. Harry may have asked that question to distract Tom from whatever tangent his clever mind was flying through, whatever plan Tom had to anchor Harry to 'life'.

Harry preferred death.

Even if Tom managed to work another 'miracle' (Harry thought the term 'prison sentence' more apt) then it would just delay the inevitable. You couldn't escape death forever, it was a fact of life. Harry would eventually go home even if he had to wait another century.

His distraction attempt worked to some degree and Harry relaxed into his squishy, mismatched arm chair listening to the colours Tom's voice evoked.

He didn't notice as he drifted off. Not into sleep but back into half memories half wistful fantasies of when he faded away fully.

xxx

Tom frowned at his golden whiskey, his tumbler sitting untouched on the small coffee table.

Harry was sitting opposite him once again lost in his own thoughts. Nothing Tom did could jolt him back to reality.

Sometimes Tom thought Harry pretended to be drifting just to spite him.

He fingered the vial in his pocket. It should work. Should tether Harry to Tom for longer. Until he came up with a more permanent solution.

He couldn't make Harry Horcruxes, Harry had to do that himself and he wouldn't... Tom didn't have enough leverage to make Harry kill someone. Tom had other ways, other ways to extend Harry's...lifespan...as it were.

His things were never taken away before Tom let them be. No one thwarted him. Not even the prophecy child, Harry Potter.

He had risen from his diary, one of his Horcruxes, through the death of a first year girl, a Weasley, and had stormed the wizarding world, taking power easily. Kidnapping the boy in the Chamber was child's play. The foolish boy had even let his wand slip into Tom's grasp.

He had killed Harry after a few mere weeks of torture; Tom wasn't into prolonged torture simply because he was impatient. He got bored and things became repetitive if he tortured the same person for days on end.

He had brought Harry back for his own entertainment.

This _sentiment_ had not been planned. He was not supposed to _value_ Harry. But he was loath to let his possession go now he was so attached.

Tom took a small sip from his tumbler the fine whiskey turning sour on his tongue.

It was Harry's revenge, Tom knew. Harry's revenge making Tom watch the slow deterioration of Harry's mind and body until he was little more than an empty shell.

Tom lifted his glass in a bitter, mocking salute.

It seemed while he had perfected the art of physical torture; Harry was a true master at causing emotional torment.

* * *

Right...yeah. Um...well it was supposed to be that choppy and...I confused myself...


End file.
